Two things happened to Ontario criminal practice within seven weeks of each other in 2026, and they are usually written about separately.
On May 29, the Supreme Court released companion judgments in R. v. Vrbanic, 2026 SCC 19 and R. v. Jacques-Taylor, 2026 SCC 20, declining to disturb the Jordan ceilings while reworking the tests for deducting delay from them.
On July 15, the Bail and Sentencing Reform Act (Bill C-14) came into force, adding aggravating factors, mandatory consecutive sentence provisions, and restrictions on conditional sentence orders.
The link between them is a single sentence, in Vrbanic Chief Justice Wagner wrote that to the extent jurisprudential and legislative developments over the past decade had increased the complexity of criminal trials, the Jordan framework could comfortably respond. Six weeks later, a legislative development of exactly that kind arrived.
This article lists out what each did, and what follows for a defence practice managing both.
Vrbanic: the case complexity exception
Vrbanic arose from a project prosecution. Eighteen individuals across ten prosecution groups, were charged in connection with a drug trafficking operation following a major investigation. Two of them: Robert Vrbanic and Sarah Josipovic, were offered trial dates beyond the 18-month provincial court ceiling because the Crown mistakenly believed they would participate in a Garofoli application. Their counsel accepted the dates at the time.
They later applied for a stay. The application judge granted it, finding the delay above the ceiling and not justified by case complexity. A majority of the Court of Appeal dismissed the Crown’s appeal.
The Supreme Court allowed the appeal, set aside the stay, and remitted the matter for trial. The appeal was heard and judgment given on December 4, 2025, with reasons delivered May 29, 2026: Wagner C.J. writing for the majority, Rowe J. concurring in the result.
The Court was explicit about scope. It stated this was not an appropriate case in which to consider more fundamental changes to the ceilings or to revisit the remedy for a section 11(b) breach. What it did instead was clarify how the exceptional circumstance of particular complexity can justify delay above a ceiling, establishing a three-part test the Crown must satisfy; beginning with whether the case is particularly complex such that delay beyond the ceiling is prima facie justifiable.
Jacques-Taylor: discrete exceptional circumstances
The companion decision addressed a different exception, and a narrower question:
‘When can delay caused by a co-accused be deducted against an accused who did not cause it’?
The trial of Mr. Jacques-Taylor and his co-accused was delayed by roughly two weeks because counsel for the co-accused was unavailable. The Court of Appeal had upheld a stay. In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court held the delay could be deducted as a discrete exceptional circumstance and returned the matter for trial.
Two propositions from the majority are the operative ones for defence practice.
Discrete exceptional events need not be rare or infrequent: They arise regularly. What makes an event exceptional is that it lies outside the Crown’s control: the test being whether it was reasonably unforeseen or reasonably unavoidable. COVID-19 was offered as an example of the category, not as the standard of severity required to enter it.
Joint trials are the norm, not the exception: Where it is in the interests of justice to hold them. The Court framed the framework as needing to account for the advantages joint trials confer and for the balancing of the section 11(b) rights of multiple accused.
Adopting the criteria from R. v. Tran, 2023 ONCA 532, the majority set four requirements before joint-trial delay is deducted:
- The delay must be inextricably tied to the Crown’s decision to proceed jointly
- The joint trial must be in the interests of justice
- The scheduling conflict must lie outside the Crown’s control
- The Crown must not reasonably have been able to ameliorate the delay, having taken reasonable steps to minimize it.
On the facts, all four were met, the deduction brought net delay below 18 months, and the stay was set aside.
What the Court declined to do
The most consequential parts of both judgments are arguably the ones where nothing changed.
The presumptive ceilings of 18 months in provincial court and 30 months in superior court are untouched. The Court expressly rejected the Crown’s request for a judicial discretion to decline a stay in cases close to the ceiling. And while the issue was not properly before it in either appeal, the Court left open the possibility of reconsidering, in a future case, whether a stay should remain the automatic remedy for every section 11(b) breach.
The reaction from the defence bar has been that the direction of travel matters more than the preserved ceilings. Counsel for the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, which intervened in Vrbanic, put the concern as a dilution: the more categories of tolerable circumstance expand, the more the constitutional right is watered down. Others have noted that the ceilings themselves were a response to accumulated flexibility, and that expanding the exceptions risks reproducing the conditions the ceilings were meant to correct.
The C-14 sentencing amendments
The bail provisions of Bill C-14 have taken most of the attention. The sentencing provisions are a separate body of change and came into force on the same date, July 15, 2026.
New and expanded aggravating factors, addressing repeat violent offending, offences against first responders, assaults against public transit employees, organized retail theft, and theft or mischief affecting essential infrastructure.
Mandatory consecutive sentences in specified combinations: a sentence for extortion served consecutively to a sentence for arson, and a sentence for violent or organized-crime-related auto theft served consecutively to a sentence for break and enter. Courts must also consider consecutive sentences in specified cases involving repeat violent offending.
Primary consideration to denunciation and deterrence for repeat motor vehicle theft, repeat break and enter, and organized crime offences.
Restrictions on conditional sentence orders for sexual assault and for offences of a sexual nature, or committed for a sexual purpose, involving a victim under 18.
Restored driving prohibitions for manslaughter and criminal negligence causing bodily harm or death, together with an increased penalty for contempt, strengthened fine enforcement, and expanded remote appearances.
Certain Youth Criminal Justice Act provisions were not proclaimed with the rest and come into force later by order in council.
On the conditional sentence restriction, the Canadian Bar Association opposed the change in submissions on the bill. Its Sections accepted that a conditional sentence for a serious sexual offence would be a rare and exceptional sentence, citing the Ontario Court of Appeal’s guidance that such orders will rarely if ever be proportionate for violent sexual assault. Their position was that judicial discretion should nonetheless remain available for exceptional cases, and that conditional sentences were introduced in part to address overincarceration, with particular consequences for Indigenous offenders and the Gladue analysis.
On mandatory consecutive sentencing, the argument advanced against it is that Canadian courts have traditionally exercised discretion to impose concurrent sentences where offences arise from the same transaction, and that removing that discretion can produce cumulative sentences disproportionate to a single criminal episode.
Where the two developments meet
Both sets of consequences point toward longer, more contested proceedings.
The bail amendments generate more reverse onus hearings, each requiring a documentary release plan. The sentencing amendments introduce mandatory consecutive analysis, new aggravating factors that must be addressed on the record, and a narrowed range of available dispositions which makes resolution discussions harder and contested sentencing hearings more likely.
Longer, more contested proceedings consume Jordan time. And the exceptions available to the Crown for delay above the ceiling have just been clarified in a direction that gives more room, particularly in multi-accused prosecutions of the kind C-14 targets.
That is the practical convergence. The transition also matters: bail hearings held after July 15 may be assessed under the new rules even where the alleged offence predates them, and the position for sentencing across proceedings at different stages requires its own analysis rather than an assumption.
What follows for practice
Track section 11(b) from intake, not from the stay application. Jacques-Taylor makes co-accused delay deductible where the four criteria are met, so the record of when dates were offered, when they were accepted, what alternatives existed, and what the Crown did to minimise delay is now the material that determines the outcome. That record is built contemporaneously or not at all.
Record joint-trial status and co-accused counsel scheduling on the file. Delay attributable to another party’s counsel is no longer a background fact.
Document Crown conduct on scheduling. Whether the Crown could reasonably have ameliorated the delay is a live criterion, and the Ontario Court of Appeal has set aside findings of defence delay where earlier compliant dates were available but not offered promptly.
Separate the two C-14 layers on the file. Bail consequences and sentencing consequences arise from the same statute but attach at different stages and to different analysis. Treating C-14 as a single event obscures which provisions apply when.
Flag disposition constraints early. Where a conditional sentence is now unavailable, that shapes the resolution conversation from the outset rather than at the sentencing stage.